


The Dying Days

by theseamofthesky



Category: Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 21:17:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4195221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseamofthesky/pseuds/theseamofthesky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As his time on earth draws to a close, Faustus’ servant considers his master</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dying Days

“I think my master means to die shortly.”

The doctor’s servant had spoken so when poised at the entrance to his study. A comely young man, clever too, both a worthy servant and student. He had caught the devil’s eye from the beginning and Mephistopheles had filled a number of those tiresome hours that Faustus spent in repose by following him. 

Sometimes, when the man paused at his work and sunned himself in the courtyard, Mephistopheles would lean beside him on the step, allowing his lean frame to coil around Wagner. 

Their hands were most alike. Both long fingered and dextrous, comfortable with quill and needle. Sometimes he would dwell on how both of their hands had touched Faustus. He could not imagine the servant’s hands twisting so cruelly as his had done in the good doctor’s hair.

At their wrists the similarities ended. Wagner was prone to pushing his sleeves up somewhat and exposing the faintest hint of sunned skin. The fine hairs that grew there would all but glow in the sun. He would lean back against the stairs, his elbows behind his back to support him, and the delicate skin of his inner arm would welcome the sun’s warm rays.

The dark robes of Mephistopheles would never expose such a weakness.

Wagner’s neck was almost ruddy. His collar would gape, setting free the longest of his dark blonde curls. The skin there was warm and rosy and sometimes Mephistopheles would press his lips to his nape and sense summer.

Then the man would shiver, and draw his collar closer to his neck, and walk briskly out through the gate, like a man who sees the clouds on the horizon with a long way of his journey still to go. The sun would cast a short shadow on the dusty floor, sharp and distinct.

Mephistopheles would return to his master in his darkened rooms. 

Their master would indeed die shortly.

The four and twenty years were winding to their close. 

All brilliance and desperate hope had long since faded. At first, Faustus had exercised his clumsy human curiosity like a child, unafraid of where any knowledge or sight would take him. The only downfall lay in the disappointment of when the truth could not measure up to his own feverish and magnificent imagination.

Flights through windstrewn clouds upon dragons had become weary steps from writing desk to bed. The world had shrunk around Faustus. The man who once raced defiantly away from God’s kingdom was now imprisoned by his own four walls.

The desire to shock the world had curdled inside him. Mephistopheles had watched as his master’s appetites shrank and died inside him. Only his appetite for self-satisfaction remained somewhat intact. Mephistopheles had watched this slow reduction with a smile. 

Faustus had once demanded the world. Now a single woman would suffice.

Lust may try to claim the doctor’s last actions for themself, but he knew better. He saw how most Faustus’ eyes would slide right past Helen, alighting hungrily on the faces of the scholars still brave enough to visit him. Their admiration did but little to assuage the hunger deep in his gut.

Mephistopheles felt this hunger and it was transformed within him into a fierce joy. He was the lower half of Faustus’ hourglass; each grain less for the doctor was yet another gain for him.

And yet he was not content. 

Helen stood before him, all but naked, an expanse of bronzed skin that was acres wide. She smiled past Faustus, her eyes wryly meeting Mephistopheles, as he all but prostrated himself before her. But Faustus would not take her. He would not try to have her. 

The fool tried to love her.

Faustus had sworn to give as many souls as there were stars to possess Mephistopheles . He had but one, and by now it was a worn and tawdry thing. Yet each night it was offered, after Helen faded away, Mephistopheles would take it gladly.

How could that lovely apparition believe that she had any power, when she required a kiss to pull forth a man’s soul? Mephistopheles could achieve the same with a single tooth.

In the darkest hours of the night, Faustus would pull his servant to him. He would close his eyes against the pressing darkness of his ceiling as Mephistopheles pressed kisses to his jaw and neck, mapping out his jugular with the slightest pressure of his teeth. Faustus’ arms would pull him tight. Not a breath could pass between them.

Afterwards, the doctor would fall into a fitful sleep in the demon’s arms.Mephistopheles would coil himself around him like a snake, thin limbs curling tight around his own precious soul. As the sun rolled out its morning rays, the soft resonance of Faustus’ heartbeat echoed inside his empty chest and an emotion rose in Mephistopheles that, if he had cared to consider it, he would have identified as regret. 

Wagner might have made a worthy master. Envenomed steel and maudlin thoughts were as foreign to him as night to day. He might even have reached out to Mephistopheles willingly, seeking pleasure in his arms with a joyful smile and a careless laugh, rather than with shaking hands and kisses that tasted of destruction.

But the man was no Faustus. This laurel bough of Apollo might well grow straight and true, but it would never reach so high as Faustus’. Only the ruin of the greatest promise would please the one below.

No, this good man would both study well and marry a woman with cheeks of a ruddiness to match his own and a brood of handsome children would weep at his grave as his soul rose to Heaven. 

For now, Mephistopheles would serve his master well. He returned to his chambers, where the doctor lay half-clothed upon his bed, muttering a litany of half-formed prayers through clenched teeth. 

The demon pressed his cold hands to his heated forehead. Faustus quieted as Mephistopheles murmured the nonsense that he had heard mothers speak to their children when they would not go to sleep.

To have Faustus plagued by nightmares would only have pleased Lucifer still more. In sleep, those who were destined to belong to him provided the most devastating view of their futures, all through their own efforts.

However, Mephistopheles did not feel the inclination to leave the doctor without comfort. When his sleep was peaceful he reached out and fisted his hands in Mephistopheles’ shirt. His head rested in the hollow of his neck and through the substance of his skin, through the network of blood and sinew, his soul would quietly glow.

His master did mean to die shortly. But the day was not yet come. Until then, he would lie in Mephistopheles arms and dream.


End file.
